Film or digital?
It’s a question that has people heated and taking sides.
Well, not people, per se. Movie nerds.
Literally no one else gives a shit.
Which is more or less as it should be. Of all the going concerns in the world, film versus digital should be very low on our national list of priorities.
And yet, here in the world of film it’s become a topic of conversation thanks to the lines in the sand drawn by industry icons like Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan.
We’ve even delved into it here at Cinapse, thanks to Ryan Lewellen’s recent editorial and our upcoming Two Cents on the film Side By Side.
In fact, it’s that selfsame viewing of Side By Side that prompted me to try and answer the question for myself, once and for all: film or video?
Actually, that’s kind of a bullshit setup because I already know the answer is probably digital.
But you’re already here, so let’s just go with it, yeah?
I’m old enough to remember how amazing it was when I learned that there were VHS camcorders available to consumers. My friend had one, and we started making stupid videos that I’m sure would embarrass the shit out of me if they ever came out now.
I was, at the time, vaguely aware of a difference between the movies I’d watch and the TV shows, and even between dramas on TV and comedies on TV… but in the end, it didn’t really matter that much.
It was all stories to me.
Of course, when I got older and started seriously getting into film, it was right around the time of Dogme 95. And it was a revelation. Movies shot on video being treated like actual art? Who would have ever thought? I mean, granted, they were ugly as sin. But they were REAL movies.
It took the abstract idea of making a film, which was an unattainable goal when I was growing up, and made it a possibility.
Rare is the lover of film who, at one point or another, doesn’t want to try and make one of their own. It’s a basic creative impulse, really. But when I was growing up, it wasn’t anything more than a pipe dream. One look at the cost of a roll of film and that was pretty much it. We could make our cute little analog whatevers, but real filmmaking? Only the people with real money could make REAL movies.
Digital video was the democratization of art.
Which is great as bumper stickers go, but also comes up against a hundred years of celluloid indoctrination.
Film was our default setting. Anything that was not “film” was considered lesser, because that is simply what 99.9% of cinema looked like. We were used to it.
Early digital was ugly, grainy, and the operators, drunk with the new freedoms, forgot everything they ever knew about proper framing.
But on the other hand, we were seeing new types of shots, new images, new ideas on what a camera is capable of capturing. The reality of the matter is that we had more or less seen the roof of what film can do. Film has found what its good at, and stuck to that, with minor tweaking for several decades now.
George Lucas is famous for having said “Film is dead,” which lovers of film take offense to, or vigorously dispute.
I like to think that what he meant is that film is no longer capable of change or surprise or innovation, and in a creative medium, that really is the same thing as death. While film has remained the same, digital has evolved by leaps and bounds. With calculated precision, it has figured out ways to replicate the previously complicated and labor intensive methods of processing images, as well as do things that film is incapable of.
Which I think has been more than proven where it counts, on the big screen. And yet, from those who love and revere film we hear a very different story.
What’s interesting in watching Side By Side is how the most vocal opponent of digital (Christopher Nolan, who seems less wary of it than openly contemptuous) is the least articulate in explaining why film is the superior medium. “I’ve been asked to justify shooting on film. I’m not really seeing people being asked to justify shooting digital,” is his opening salvo, which seems a case of willful obtuseness. Nobody needs to justify digital because the advantages are self evident.
Judging from Side By Side, the arguments of the anti-digital contingent come more from a place of emotion than a place of logic. Their arguments of the abstract art of photochemical processes and the magic of dailies, while touching and interesting, seem steeped in the glories of the past. There’s a pride that cinematographers have in being able to create the exact look their director wants. And rightly so. It’s an arcane process, one that requires equal parts skill and artistry. And one that is deeply threatened by the evolution of digital processes.
In a way, it feels wrong to admit this. I’m a child of film. There has always been a magic and a mystery to the way photography works. All fluids and nitrate and the perfect intersection of science and art.
But the thing about magic in mystery is that they’re all well and good, but when it comes to creation, magic and mystery don’t really help get the job done. In fact, they’re actively counterproductive.
I’m a firm believer that limitations are the key to creative success. Rarely does an unlimited budget result in a great film. And the pressure of using film would obviously makes things more focused and streamlined on a set. So, in that sense, I should be in favor of film.
But in another sense, digital gives a sense of play where new and unexpected things can happen. Say what you will about David Lynch’s Inland Empire, but there are images and scenes in that film that would not have been possible without the freedom digital filmmaking provides.
So yes, I am in some ways conflicted. And if the anti-digital contingent based more of their arguments around that aspect of things, I might be a little more inclined to side with them.
But usually, it’s not that.
Usually, it’s a lot of arguments about how digital is somehow “false” and audiences can tell the difference. And sure, the audience could tell ten or fifteen years ago, when digital movies looked like Dancer In The Dark or Vidocq. But when we’re talking R.I.P.D. or 22 Jump Street, I promise you people don’t know the difference.
(Okay, so nobody actually watched R.I.P.D. Not the point.)
And in the end, this is the only argument necessary. For all our pretensions as creators, the thing that truly matters is the audience. And like I said at the start, the audience doesn’t give a shit. It’s all too easy to forget once you’ve peeked behind the curtain. But just like when I was a kid, to the people in the theater, they’re all stories in the end.
Film is great, and should always be an option. But it’s not the future. Hell, it’s not even the present.
Digital isn’t perfect, and it’s never going to be film. But to be against something so new and relatively unexplored, something that has the capacity to give more people a fair chance to realize their visions and dreams…to argue against that is to be on the losing side of the battle, period.
